Memories
by NorthernTrash-x
Summary: Ichigo x Senna. Memories fade, but it is all he has. For Afshan.


Ichigo x Senna

**Memories**

_Do you remember chalk hearts melting on a playground wall?  
><em>_Do you remember dawn escapes from moon washed college halls?  
><em>_Do you remember that cherry blossom in the market square?  
><em>_Do you remember I thought it was confetti in our hair?  
><em>_By the way didn't I break your heart?  
><em>Marillion

Memories fade.

We lose those images in our minds that once, in a different time of life, we swore we would keep forever. Sometimes that it intentional; most of the times it is not. Some memories are taken from you; that is how Ichigo feels, like someone took her away from him.

Senna.

She has been lost.

It is the human condition to forget, and we do it all the time, without meaning to. A sight that we said at the time was more beautiful than any we had experienced before; a face with haunting eyes. But sooner or later the detail begins to slip. Sometimes we can hold it in our heads by staring at photographs, framed or in albums or tucked into wallets, photographs that took a picture of the image but not the true essence of it, that are never quite enough to summon the feeling that you had from seeing it the first time.

Before you know it, you stop looking at the photographs, because you know the image well enough but it can never give you what you are looking for.

And then one day you find the photograph again, one day when age has crept over you and your body is tired and your mind searching for peace, and you stare at that photograph with a resigned smile and the knowledge that, once, it made you happy, although you cannot now quite remember why.

It is a gift that we were given; a curse that we must bear.

But it is for the best, as much as we pretend that it isn't. If we could remember every beautiful moment in our lives in absolute detail, how could you get up the next day knowing that it won't be as great? When they fade into sepia toned memories everything seems better than it was, but with the vague subjective feeling of a memory; we do not expect anything to live up to a memory. You could not live every day if you did not forget those moments that felt perfect.

And that was how it was for Ichigo.

He remembered Senna. Rukia had been wrong when she told Ichigo that he would forget her. She was wrong when she said that all memories of Senna would slip away from him, because she had never really existed, not really. Rukia hadn't known that she was wrong, and never found out, because Ichigo didn't tell her.

It wasn't worth making a fuss about, really.

The memories that he had were blurred, rippling as though he were looking at them through a cascade of water, so that one moment moved to another and he was left convinced that there was something missing between. They came to him mostly in dreams, when his subconscious was free to let out his memories. He didn't remember everything, not quite. There were fragments missing, and his dreams sometimes were like looking through cracked glass, pieces missing, incomplete. He couldn't recollect the colour of her eyes or the way her hair had felt against his cheek when he had carried her on his back. He couldn't remember her frown, not quite- it was there, on the edge of his vision, like a figure ducking out of sight every time he turned around.

There, but not quite.

Every breeze that blew crackling autumn leaves up into the air made him think of her.

Senna may not have been real, she may have only been a construct of concepts slipped in between the pages of the world, but Ichigo still remembered her.

He could not forget her, because as abstract as she was, he knew that he had seen her smile, touched her skin, felt the weight of her body on his back as he carried he. He knew the colour of her hair and the way her laughter sounded. He knew her, _knew _that she had been there, and because of that she had been real, if only in a small, insignificant way, and his mind wouldn't let him forget her.

He couldn't. She _had_ been real.

She was there.

And so now all he does is dream of her. It is all he can do, really, and he cannot stop. A whispered voice, loud laughter. It echoes in his ears and he wakes with it, starting. For a moment he almost believes that it is real, but then he sinks back into the cool sheets and remembers that it is not. The touch of her hand on his cheek. The feeling of a silk ribbon slipping through his fingers.

The light touch of her kiss against his cheek, before she vanished.

She's gone. And despite having all the powers of the world he cannot get her back.

That thought hurts more than anything else; that despite all of what he can do she is lost to him forever. Even if there is a way to get her back he doesn't knew how, wouldn't know where to start, doesn't know how or what or where or why. He's lost her now. There is no hope of getting her back. He closes his eyes and tries to see her, calls back that image of her that he swears is slightly more blurred than it should be. He touches his eyelids with soft fingertips and wishes that when he opened them again she would be there next to him, smiling at him, eyes wide so that he could see the colour of them again.

So that he could remember.

Because that's all he wants now. He's given up hope of finding her; he just wants to be able to fill in those parts of her that he can't remember, but as hard as he tries, it is impossible. As the days and months and years slip by he feels that the picture of her he has in his mind is fading itself. Now he remembers less than ever, despite trying so hard. It is like a photograph, fading after years of exposure. He can't print it again. It isn't backed up on his hard drive. Once it is gone, it is gone.

And he has to learn to live with that.


End file.
